Protest against Veolia. (Photo: US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation)

At 2:30pm on Wednesday, December 19, 2012, at a standing-room only meeting in the mayor’s office for the St. Louis City Board of Estimate & Apportionment (E & A), the Board declined to approve a city contract with Veolia Water, putting off the vote until there can be a full investigation into the company’s history. The decision came in light of new information on the company’s involvement with ethnic discrimination in Palestine, as well as a flurry of phone calls, emails, and meetings voicing “concerns about the company’s human rights practices and financial condition,” as reported by St. Louis National Public Radio.

In the six hours prior to the vote, board members had received more than 200 emails apiece asking them not to rush the contract through. Their phones rang off the hook as local activists also addressed the officials on Twitter. Members of the St. Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee and St. Louis Jewish Voice for Peace attended the meeting to show their opposition to Veolia.

The board, which is comprised of the St. Louis City Mayor Francis Slay, Comptroller Darlene Green, and President of the Board of Aldermen Lewis Reed, agreed that they could not in good conscience vote to approve a contract with so many outstanding questions. Earlier, the St. Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee had delivered a statement and facts sheet documenting Veolia’s history of profiting from Israel’s illegal occupation and apartheid policies in Palestine, and the company’s notorious environmentally disastrous activities, anti-labor practices, mismanagement, corruption, bribery, embezzlement, fraud, and failure to make good on promised improvements.

When Mayor Slay presented the contract with a motion to approve, President Reed put forward a motion to postpone the vote in order to allow time for investigation into the company’s practices. While the city’s Water Commissioner and the mayor continued to argue that Veolia was the right company for the job, Green spoke eloquently in agreement with Reed:

“We have several complaints from our citizenry. And I want to honor their complaints [and] their time and desire to ‘Investigate Veolia.’… It’s not our money; it’s their money. Period… You [the citizens] do matter. So let’s get more information.”

Reed expressed concerns that the contract had been added to the agenda at the last-minute, following outcry from environmentalists, workers, the Palestine solidarity community, and other constituencies outraged by the corporation’s abysmal track record.

In spite of the late notice, local organizers mobilized hundreds to spring into action. This victory has shown the power of everyday people standing up to multinational corporations and demanding transparency in public contracts.

Sandra Tamari, a local Palestinian-American member of the St. Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee attended the meeting and said:

“I thank the E&A board for their principled decision. My family lives in the occupied West Bank, where Israel has implemented a system of segregated roads and segregated buses, some of which Veolia operates. If we tried to board these Veolia buses, my family and I would be forced off simply because of our ethnicity and religion, which is what happened to the Palestinian Freedom Riders not long ago. I do not feel safe funding a corporation that oppresses my people, each time I turn on the faucet here. If the city stands against segregation in the U.S., it should not support corporations participating in segregation elsewhere.”

Having won the first victory, St. Louisans will now redouble efforts to stop the contract once and for all. It’s time for St. Louis to dump Veolia.

About Saint Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee

Saint Louis Palestine Solidarity Committee (STL-PSC) is a project of the St. Louis Instead of War Coalition. We began organizing against Israeli Apartheid and the Israeli occupation in 2009 in response to the calls of Palestinian civil society for organized action against the Israeli Occupation of Palestine. Contact us here: [email protected]

MOSCOW — The U.S. Senate on Thursday repealed a trade sanction imposed 38 years ago to force the Soviet Union to allow Jews and other religious minorities to emigrate, replacing it with a modern-day punishment for human rights abuse that has enraged Russian officials.

The old law, one of the last vestiges of the Cold War, was called the Jackson-Vanik Amendment, named after a U.S. senator and a representative. The new law, passed 92 to 4, grants Russia and Moldova permanent normal trade relations, but it is coupled with the Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act, which honors a dead Russian. The law blacklists Russians connected to the death of Magnitsky in police custody and to other gross human rights violations, prohibiting entrance to the United States and use of its banking system.

“Today, we close a chapter in U.S. history,” Sen. Benjamin L. Cardin (D-Md.), one of the prime movers of the Magnitsky bill, said during the debate on Jackson-Vanik. “It served its purpose. Today, we open a new chapter in U.S. leadership for human rights.”

I’ve mentioned it here before. Do not underestimate the groundswell now going on in the heartland. The home of the Progressive Movement, which heralded much positive social change in the US in the early 20th century.

this is so fantastic. what a fabulous day for the movement. st louis and south africa! onward.

“I do not feel safe funding a corporation that oppresses my people, each time I turn on the faucet here. If the city stands against segregation in the U.S., it should not support corporations participating in segregation elsewhere.”

We’re going to find out very soon what sort of hasbara brigade St. Louis has to offer. Isn’t that exciting. (I contributed to the flooding of calls, and it’s pretty likely we’ll be calling again next month.)

This report isn’t perfect (Give Israel advocates one thing — they’ve mangled the English language so badly “disputed” is now a euphemism for “occupied”) but it deserves credit for actually airing the idea that separate roads and buses constitute segregation. It also shows how differently the three city officials reacted to the pressure. And the very first sentence of the article is so sweet.

Mondoweiss in Your Inbox

Get Mondoweiss delivered directly to your inbox every morning and stay up to date with our independent coverage of events in the Middle East!

Support Mondoweiss’s independent journalism today

Mondoweiss brings you the news that no one else will. Your tax-deductible donation enables us to deliver information, analysis and voices stifled elsewhere. Please give now to maintain and grow this unique resource.